Holy moly me oh my!

Love it or not it’s been hot, and it’s only going to get hotter! I don’t think we’ve ever seen weather this warm, for so long, this early in the season. I certainly don’t remember anything like this. If the forecasts hold, things are shaping up to make for a very interesting situation heading into the holiday weekend.

As I mentioned last week, we typically have considerably less pool usage on the 4th of July when it falls on the weekend. Given the current forecast I’m not so sure that’s going to happen this time around. As I mentioned last week, the games will not be happening this year. And that fun float thing that we were planning, it may have to be tabled or modified as well. It really depends on just how many swimmers we have show up. So it may be touch and go, and it might have to come down to a very last minute yea or nay. I will post updated info on this as the picture becomes more clear.

I should probably touch base about parties and guests now too. While we don’t schedule parties on the holiday anyway, at this point I will not be scheduling any more parties on Friday or Sunday either. As far as guests go, I think if everyone exercises a bit of restraint in not inviting all of their friends/neighbors down for a swim things should be okay. I will keep you posted if I think it merits more restrictive action. I do want to extend a thank you for and from many of your fellow pool members. The feedback that I receive about these party/guest limitations is for the most part extremely understanding and supportive.

Also, in anticipation of the continued hot weather I am working on keeping the pool open a tad longer in the evenings later in the week. I will post updates on Facebook and on the club website as I get those figured out.

Now how about that pool? It feels too cold. It feels too warm. As you can imagine trying to nail down a pool temp that works for everyone is like a dog chasing its tail. What works for one, doesn’t for another, and what feels great in the afternoon doesn’t in the morning. Of course some of this depends on what you are doing in the pool too.

The pool’s normal operating temperature is 84 degrees. On a typical day, 83 will feel a tad cold, and 85 a tad warm. Now if I leave the pool temp set at the normal 84 on extremely hot days, the pool will end up way too warm, pushing it into the upper 80’s. A better target to shoot for is somewhere between 80 – 82. This gives us capacity to take care of the solar gain. It’s an orchestrated combination of looking at the current and forecasted weather and trying to not put any more heat into the pool, while also letting enough heat out of the pool overnight. It’s not always easy to get 200,000 gallons of water to cooperate though. Occasionally there are hiccups along the way, like for example when the boiler shut down last Tuesday night making that early morning lap swim Wednesday extra refreshing!